MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

9/1 LaHair named MVP of PCL

Triple-A Iowa first baseman Bryan LaHair, who has a franchise record 38 homers, was named Most Valuable Player of the Pacific Coast League on Thursday. In his ninth season of professional baseball, LaHair leads the league in home runs, RBI (109), extra-base hits (76), total bases (303), and intentional walks (9). He’s also second in the league in slugging (.664) and OPS (1.070), fourth in doubles (38), fifth in runs scored (91), and seventh in batting (.331). His 38 homers lead all of Minor League baseball. Ian Gac of Winston-Salem and Tim Wheeler of Tulsa were tied for second with 33.

In addition to surpassing the former franchise home run record of 37 set by Joe Hicks in 1984, LaHair ranks second on the Iowa single-season list in total bases, is tied for third in doubles, and fourth in RBI. He joins Mel Hall (1982) as the only Iowa players to have 30 doubles and 30 home runs in the season.

LaHair is the second Iowa Cubs player to be named PCL MVP. Geovany Soto received the award in 2007. The Cubs were expected to call up LaHair. Mike Quade, player development director Oneri Fleita and interim GM Randy Bush were to meet Friday to go over the roster and determine who to call up.

15 Comments

Indeed, we all know that no matter who gets called up they are going to ride the pine and only come in to pinch hit and be a defensive back up late in games. LaHair will come up and maybe, just maybe start once a week.

. If you dislike the entire cub organization so much join up with ken williams and ozzie and defend those guys and some of their terrible contracts that are on-going as we speak.. brian sabean ate 12 million yesterday. besides kevin tower and doug melvin it is a constant roll of the dice with many clubs.

Uh….because this is about the Cubs? And doesn’t concern the Sox or Sabean? Who cares if Williams turned into Hendry last year and salivated over Dunn? At least he works for a team that has A STINKIN’ DH POSITION not like Hendry. Really, where did Hendry think Soriano would play and help the team as he aged and became even more of a defensive liability FOR EIGHT STINKIN’ YEARS? Not to mention signing Bradley with his stellar defense AND personality. Who would have known Bradley was such trouble? Geez, didn’t his antics just shock the entire baseball community? Not a good time to compare Hendry or the Cubs with any other GM or team since Hendry was FIRED. How is signing a defensive liability like Soriano with nowhere to play him FOR EIGHT STINKIN’ YEARS a roll of the dice? THAT was a sure bet he would slow down, stop stealing bases, drop more balls, take more bad routes…..no gamble there, just BAD. If it was just the Fukodome signing that would be different as that was a roll of the dice by Hendry and any other GM would have rolled the same dice on Fukodome, but it’s not just Fukodome it’s bad after bad player Hendry tried to plug the holes that he created.

My kids have enjoyed watching Soriano hit those towering homeruns all these years and is the main reason they wanted to go to wrigley so often. They liked big Z too as he signed balls for them twice. Why make fun of my cubs . That hurts the feelings of my kids who are sensitive and love their cubs.

Kids Thank goodness most Cub fans are not old bitter sourpusses and enjoy our players. we drive all the way from Champaign where our farm is and if Soriano was not in the lineup my b oys would miss him. they are taught in sunday school not to say hateful things like Mr joe does about our cubs.

I forgot Soriano hits towering homeruns as well as play-off winning homeruns and game saving catches…my bad. The tears are flowing boys and girls, I can only hope Barney, the Smurfs, Big Bird and all the other benevolent creations out there can forgive me. I never thought of it that way, oh…from the mouths of babes. I will do a complete 180 and now root, cheer, smile and jump for joy as our beloved Cubbies with their albatross superstar player continue their unstoppable pursuit of the World Series of Towering Homeruns in the land of OZ. Or…I can hold out for the Ricketts to continue to do the right thing and hire competant people to do good things for our beloved Cubs, yeah, maybe I’ll live in reality. The Ricketts took the first step and now have given us hope for more good things to come so as surprisingly NOT HATEFUL as this sounds….Thanks Mr. Ricketts! Go Cubs! Go Cubs! And by the way, if some player comes along with a lot of talent but doesn’t smile at the kiddies in the bleachers, gosh, golly, gee whiz and PLEASE Mr. Tom have your new GM give them a chance to help our Cubs get to the (real) World Series despite them not sharing tea and cookies with the boys and girls? And don’t forget to have him re-sign Milton Bradley so he too can interact with the kids, smile and make nice, heck he might even throw the kiddies a ball…even if it was only the second out. Soriano DOES have a nice, winning smile though, I’ll give you that.

So Kids go to the ballpark and enjoy the players, the smiles etc. That’s good, their ignorance is bliss? Fun is fun! No reason to deny anybody’s right to criticize a bad team however. There is room for both in Cubbie Land.

Sounds like the kids need to find new heros. The whole point is to win games and the World Series, not make kids happy. Sorry, but its the truth. Joey speaks the truth, this team sucks and will continue to suck unless some major changes are made, including dumping Soriano who is pretty much worthless.

I actually have a one year old, and love her more than anything. Second, just because I don’t agree with everything my team does, doesn’t mean I don’t love them. I have every right to question what management does.

If the main reason for any kids to go to Wrigley Field is to watch Soriano’s “towering homeruns” (which have been fewer and fewer) they may get to have an enjoyable time and I am happy for them, after all I LOVE KIDS. However, that sounds like part of the “culture” of apethy that needs to change in order to allow the majority of fans (kids AND adults) to also have an enjoyable time by witnessesing excellent play on the field and the return of the Chicago Cubs DYNASTY! Amen brothers and sisters! Apparently, to Ricketts’ credit he agrees, hence the firing of Hendry and the search for a much better GM. By the way, anybody know if LaHair is still wasting away on the bench, being denied the chance to show if he is the real thing or not, or has he been traded to the Brewers already?
38 homers in the minor leagues, he too deserves his fair shot of entertaining all the little kiddies with the possibilty of…dare I say?….A TOWERING HOMERUN!
The shame belongs to the Soriano Towering Homerun fan club members (and all other decendants of the Dave Kingman fan club) not to we who dissent with the status quo of mediocrity and have the nerve to speak our displeasure. Who knows, if it wasn’t for all us kid dis-liking, team despising, boring fans relentlessly commenting on a daily basis….Hendry might not have been FIRED. (that still sounds sooooo good).

So now we hate kids, don’t have jobs, and live with our mom’s, all because we don’t like the Cubs crazy moves lol. If we weren’t fans, would we really waste our time with this team? Crazy how some people think you have to go along with every move to be a fan. I agree, if the kids like seeing Soriano hit home runs, I actually feel bad for them, because they are rare.

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